By Parker Holley- Sports Reporter
On Thursday, September 26th, the Oakland Athletics played their last game in Oakland, leaving the city to be without a sports team for the first time since 1960, when the Raiders began playing there.
The Athletics moved to Las Vegas, following low ticket sales and a consistent payroll at the bottom of the league.
The team has been a staple in the Oakland community for 57 years, since 1968, and are the third and final professional team to leave the city, following the Golden State Warriors in 2019 and the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020. The team played their last home game to a sold out crowd in the Oakland Coliseum on Thursday, September 26th where they beat the Texas Rangers 3-2. Fans filled the stadium, adorned in green and yellow, holding posters and cheering on their beloved team for the last time in the Coliseum.
While the A’s are a staple in Oakland culture, this is not the first time a Major League Baseball team has switched cities. Over ten teams in the MLB have changed towns, some even twice as the Athletics franchise has resided in both Kansas City and Philadelphia before settling in Oakland.
Photo by Drew Murray
The feeling of having a franchise removed from a town can leave a lasting impact on those who have cheered for it, as Ms. Powers’ father was a New York Giants fan before their move to San Francisco. She stated, “my dad always said that was devastating for him as that was his lifelong team”.
This removal of the team from the city leaves them in limbo as they will now have to share a stadium with the minor league baseball team, The Sacramento River Cats, while their new 1.5 billion dollar stadium is under construction in Las Vegas.
Because of the additional games to be played on the field, there is the high possibility that the Sacramento River Cats field will be converted from natural grass to turf, a surface that only five major league teams have installed as of now in their stadiums. Because of the surface being the minority in baseball there are a lot of problems that can come from playing on turf.
Sophomore Emma Hurst, who plays softball says, “There is a lot of time where you can slip, and the weather affects turf a lot because the turf balls are really dark, so when it’s hot outside it’s reflecting, which can affect a game.”
Because the surface is made of synthetic materials, the heat from the field can become unbearable, causing many problems for the A’s as they will be playing in an open air stadium in Sacramento. Because of this condition, the team has had to begin making moves to limit the amount of games they play in the hot summer months of June, July, and August, and has also begun making proposals to the MLB for the ability to play more night games.
A large reason for the Athletics’ move is their hated owner John Fisher, a recluse who is heir to the Gap clothing fortune. Athletics’ fans and players harbor a deep hatred for Fisher, as they believe he does not see the team as a sports team but a money making opportunity according to NBC News.
Fisher has raised prices for games and food inside the stadium and has kept the lowest payroll in the MLB, according to Spotrac, only paying around 63,000,000, a staggering number compared to the over 300,000,000 the New York Mets are spending on payroll. Oakland fans have been consistently fighting to keep their final team in Oakland from long before the Warriors and Raiders left.
While the team had been entertaining the idea of building a new stadium on the water in Oakland, in April of 2023 Fisher decided against keeping the Athletics in Oakland and instead decided to relocate the team to Las Vegas, citing that the fans were not supporting their team. In a public twitter statement Fisher states, “we tried”. Though the tone of the message seemed to be heartfelt, people from Oakland, along with players thought that the message was insincere. Oaklands old pitcher, Trevor May, made a response on twitter by saying that Fisher, ” love(s) owning stuff, just not (his) actions,” and that he needs to, “Be an adult. Get in front of a camera and say it with (his) chest,” referring to the actions he has taken to aid in the team’s decline.
Because of this move, fans began to organize different protests to show their hatred towards both Fisher and the other higher ups for the A’s team, even going so far as to set up a reverse boycott where 30,000 fans showed up in green shirts reading “sell” in big letters, and began chanting to sell the team.
The Oakland Athletics will be playing in the Sacramento River Cats stadium for the 2025-27 seasons, before moving into their new stadium on the Las Vegas strip during the 2028 baseball season.
